The Faceless Clock
by satanslut
Summary: *AU Season Three* Drusilla's plan to get her Daddy back goes horribly wrong. Angel/Willow, Angel/Drusilla
1. The Faceless Clock: Part One: Drusilla

**Author's Note: This is a drastic rewrite of a story I first posted a long time ago called 'Knew Too Late'. I have also rewritten the sequels and will be posting them with this at a later**** date.**

The Faceless Clock: Part One: Drusilla

She'd named all the stars the same.

Maybe that was when she'd broken faith. Perhaps they were vexed with her, out of sorts at the confusion she'd created in their beautiful world. They must have taken to whispering amongst themselves, biding their time, plotting their revenge against a poor little girl who only wanted her Daddy to come home.

They never said a word when she came up with the plan. Or maybe they themselves, cruel stars, had whispered it to her in her own voice, singing like she once sang to the pretty yellow bird who lay unmoving on the floor of his cage. But either way, it was all so terribly, horribly wrong. Not even Miss Edith was happy now…

_"Isn't she lovely, Daddy? Little Red Riding Hood, but she's not got her wolf. Whatever shall she do?"_

_The girl trembles and the minions laugh. Drusilla isn't laughing…not yet. There will be laughter later, when she and Daddy are painting the world red and the dead dance again, flowers at their feet, swaying to the song of the stars._

_"Let her go, Dru." Her Angel is upset, growling at her as if she's been naughty. This won't do. The soul is to blame – but Drusilla has the cure for that, now doesn't she? Who's a clever girl? And won't Daddy be so proud when he's all better._

_"Ah-ah." She shakes her finger at him, knowing she'll be punished for her insolence later. She can hardly wait. "Don't be so rude, my Angel. Or you shan't have any tea." The minions tighten their grip on the girl. Good boys. Later they shall have cake, delicious cake, mixed with tears and screaming and blood every third stir._

_"What do you want?" He's still such a growly bear. It's this human, this wretched witch who took him away with her crystals and incantations._

_She sways as she approaches, inhaling the scent of him as she stands right in front of him. She strokes his cheek, letting the nails of her hand almost cut that pretty human face he wears to hide from her. "You," she whispers against his lips._

And she had him, oh yes she did. Glory and magic they were when Daddy took her. It was a dazzling dream of pain and shattering beauty, beauty from which the stars themselves had seemed to turn away in terror and envy, so bright was the light of her union with her Angel.

Now, though, Drusilla knew better. The stars had gone forever, abandoning her to a fate far worse than what she'd imagined awaited her when Grandmummy and Daddy had first come for her. She was alone, so alone, and the cold was agony unlike anything she'd ever known.

Of course, she had Angel, but he wasn't hers, no matter what it was like when he shared her bed, and she couldn't pretend that he would one day be what he had been. He loved the girl now, kept her the way Drusilla had once kept her little yellow bird. She had no sire anymore, no stars. Miss Edith and the other dolls sat mute before her, just toys they were, horrid things, and toys had no mummies. Even they were not hers anymore, not the way they used to be. They were things, like her dresses and jewels, and they didn't love her, didn't tell her secrets, didn't listen as she sang them sweet lullabies about death and the end of the world.

_She's throwing her dollies about the room, shrieking for them to speak, to stop being naughty, to come home because Mummy needs them. She hasn't cried since she was human. She cries now._

_Collapsing to the floor, she turns inside and finds nothing but ashes. She lives in a terrible world. A world of ice where there are no shadows._

_A few moments later (Or are they hours? Time is so very strange), it seems as if she's not so cold. Have the stars returned?_

_But no, because the warmth is somehow binding. It's then that she realizes the warmth is two soft human arms around her, uncertain but still, there they are._

_The pretty little girl is here, the one who took away her Daddy forevermore. She's talking and Drusilla tastes each word like candy, savouring the sweetness and the not-aloneness of each one._

_"Are you okay?"_

_"What's the matter?"_

_"There, there."_

_There are more words, but they jumble up in her head and she's not sure exactly what the girl has said when. It doesn't matter. There are words, after all, and they come to her in a gentle voice and it sounds almost like her dolls. She thinks she might love the girl now. She reaches into her mind and finds her sweet savior's name. She will say it and remember it._

_"Willow."_

She still carried the name in her pocket. She would take it out and roll it over and over on her tongue like a lollipop when she was scared, but she hardly ever saw her beautiful doll-girl anymore. Daddy had found them that day, accused her of wanting to hurt the girl, locked the Willow-bird away in her cage. 'Keeping her safe,' he had said, and no matter how hard Drusilla tried to find the magic words to convince him that she meant his red princess no harm, he never seemed to hear the ones she spoke.

He never gave her his words, either. Not hardly a one. He gave her the pain inside and the screams and the lights that were nothing like stars which she'd once thought she wanted above all things but which were now gaily-wrapped boxes with naught but emptiness inside. The pain was just pain now and the screams had no music. But it was all she had anymore, so she clung to him more fervently than ever, tried so hard to be the best little girl in the world.

She couldn't leave her Daddy, not now. Without the stars, she couldn't see her way in the darkness. No more could she hunt or dance or drown herself in oceans of sticky-warm life. The minions no longer quaked before her like aspens; indeed, they paid her no heed. They all bowed down to Daddy and Drusilla was quite forgotten. She was a baby again, but with no mummy on whom to suckle – just a Daddy who gave her a bottle full of loneliness. She wondered where her Spike was and if he would laugh if he could see what had become of her.

She took the name out and tasted it again. Willow would hold her if she were able.

End Drusilla


	2. The Faceless Clock: Part Two: Angel

The Faceless Clock: Part Two: Angel

It had all seemed so simple. He was supposed to rescue Willow from Drusilla. He was supposed to take her home.

Here he was: Lisbon, at least for now. A city nowhere near Sunnydale and from which he wasn't booked on a plane taking Willow back there. He wasn't a hero. He was nothing like a hero.

_"When are we going home?"_

_"Soon."_

_"You said that yesterday."_

He said it for weeks before she finally stopped asking, before it finally sank in that the truth was something far different. Not that he'd ever admitted that to her – no, he wasn't so direct. She didn't ask questions anymore and he volunteered nothing. They never spoke of Sunnydale.

_"Where are we going?"_

_"To see a friend of mine. He has a marvelous art collection. You'll like it."_

_"I hate art."_

_"That's ridiculous. You love art."_

_"I hate it now."_

There was no arguing with her when she got into one of her moods and she seemed to always be in one – not that it changed anything. They still went on the outings which Angel carefully planned, and she learned quickly to be polite and respectful to any of the people to whom he introduced her. She had learned, too, the folly of any attempts at escape.

_He lets her out of his sight for two seconds and she's gone. He's disappointed and even though he shouldn't be, he's surprised. It's been quite awhile that she's been in his care and a fair bit of time has passed since her last display of childish temper; he'd thought she was coming to accept her new life. She doesn't know what city she's in or even what country, and yet she's willing to do something stupid like leave his protection and run off with no money, no passport, and, as far as he's aware, no knowledge of the Portuguese language (though of course, she'd hardly be aware yet that it's a tongue she'd find handy)._

_It doesn't take him long to find her. Paulo's home is a labyrinth to someone who's never made their way through its corridors before. Angel can remember a rather revolting night spent by accident in the wrong bedroom due to the confusion wrought by the home's rather eccentric layout. Of course, that was long ago, but Paulo's not one to gut the architecture of his ancestral home. Confounding it began and confounding it remains. Lucky thing Angelus had learned its passages well after that first night._

_Willow has no such knowledge and she's easily cornered in one of the myriad dead-end hallways. He plays it cool and civilized, as always._

_"It's easy to get lost here. If you were looking for the tapestries, I can show you where they are." He doesn't acknowledge what he knows._

_"I was trying to get out of here. I was trying to get away." Her chin is thrust forward and her colour is high. There's something adorable about her when she's being brave and foolhardy. He thinks that's why he keeps her, for all the trouble she causes and for all that she doesn't want to be kept._

_He doesn't say a word, simply loops her arm through his and walks her back down the hall. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but a glance at the oblivious geniality of his expression seems to rob her of words. She doesn't have it in her to make another futile effort at fighting someone who refuses to acknowledge that war has been declared. Tonight, he realizes, is the last gasp of rebellion, the last desperate attempt of the bird to escape its cage. Her wings are no match for iron bars, her gumption no match for his will._

That was the night when he realized he loved her. He wasn't sure why it hadn't occurred to him earlier; or maybe it had, simply not in so many words. He knew it then, though, and it seemed as if he'd felt that way forever. He hadn't – or perhaps he had. Maybe he'd just been so caught up in the romantic notion of loving a Slayer that he'd never thought about whether he loved _Buffy_ at all or what feelings he really had and for whom he had them.

None of that introspective nonsense really mattered though, did it? He'd worn a cilice for long enough, he was sure. He'd earned the right to feel and live and not have to ponder what it all meant. He'd earned the right to both love and sex, though he couldn't yet share them both with one woman. He was grateful _to_ Drusilla for the former, but he was far _more _grateful _for _her when it came to slaking his need for the latter.

_He comes to her once again and she welcomes him into her bed and body, nails scratching his back, cunt eager for each sharp, cruel thrust, her cries resounding off the walls of her bedchamber as they mingle with the roar of his completion. The hum of her blood in his veins is the cigarette afterwards._

_"My Angel," she coos when it is over, just as she always does, a fraction more desperation in her tone each time._

_He says nothing. What is there to say? She gave him Willow, yes, but not out of the goodness of her heart and the altruistic desire to please her sire, so what she gets from him is payment enough for services rendered. A childe whose intent was insolence and mutiny is lucky to still have her master's protection and she's aware of that, or should be, and it's all the same to Angel._

_He gets up and redresses himself. He never stays the night. It would be an intimacy too false for him to tolerate and would only confuse the hapless creature whose bed he's now leaving. She says nothing more as he gets up and walks out the door. She's learned her place. It's a safe place. He's content to allow her to stay in it._

He always went to Willow afterwards; always sat with her and tried to make her see. She was as stubborn in her attempts to rebuff as Drusilla was in her attempts to entice and achieved equal success. He never gave up. At least she acquiesced now, even allowed him to sit beside her. Early on, there'd been that one bad night with a pencil, but it had done no lasting harm and a visit from a warlock had ensured no such unpleasantness would ever occur again, so Angel could be forgiving and let the incident pass with no further mention.

There was so much beauty in her eyes, even when they were full of tears, and it grew harder and harder for him to leave her after they'd talked. Someday their conversations would consist of more than his attempts at drawing her out and the painful silence that took the place of her pleas to leave him, but until then, being near her was better than nothing. Each night, she feigned fatigue after a time and he was forced to take that as a cue to depart, to let her go to bed alone.

Someday, he knew, it would be different. The curse would be repaired and he'd have Willow in every way. He wouldn't need Drusilla then and he wondered just what he'd do with her. Not a current necessity, he knew, but still something to think about, along with how to make progress in Willow's affections and where they should go tomorrow. They'd been in Lisbon long enough now; it was time to find a new city. He went to the study and poured a glass of brandy. An atlas sat on a table next to an imposing yet comfortable chair. He sat down and gazed at the maps as he pondered what to do. There was a whole world out there.

But really, did it matter where they went? After all, he had Willow, no matter what country or city he chose as their new temporary home. He closed the book almost as soon as he'd opened it and took a sip of his brandy. Back in her room, he knew Willow would be crying for an hour or so before finally falling asleep. Finish his brandy – then he would choose a city. It wouldn't be Sunnydale. It wouldn't be anywhere near Sunnydale.

End Angel


	3. The Faceless Clock: Part Three: Willow

The Faceless Clock: Part Three: Willow

"There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

Just click your heels together three times. Willow was desperate enough to try it. It didn't work - she supposed she hadn't really expected it to – still, she'd hoped…oh how she'd hoped. But here she was, wherever 'here' was. All she knew about it was that she was far from home… so very far from home.

_"Where are we?"_

_"At the home of an old friend."_

_"That's not what I meant."_

Angel never answered her questions, not really. He lied or evaded or replied to something she never said as if she hadn't asked a question at all. It was maddening and she felt trapped in some sort of surrealist nightmare where conversations split and tore and pieces of them were stitched onto scraps of other conversations and communication turned into a patchwork quilt with no rhyme or reason. She would hear Drusilla talking to herself in the halls and wonder if that didn't make more sense than trying to talk to Angel, or to anyone else. _Willow's _words disappeared the moment they emerged from her mouth and sometimes she got it into her head to wonder if this was some sort of Hellmouth-created punishment for babbling…or for kissing Xander…or for both…or for something else she'd done but didn't understand the wrong of doing.

Nothing seemed real anymore. Except that everything seemed impossibly real and completely inescapable.

Buffy wasn't coming. The strange thing was that Willow never thought she would.

_She is dreaming and the dream is the same as she's had every night. She's home. Sure, things aren't perfect, but she and Oz are mending their relationship and life, for all its demons and uncertainty, isn't such a bad thing at all. She and Oz are holding hands as they walk out to his van._

_Then she wakes up._

_Just as she has every day and at exactly the same moment._

_She wonders why she always dreams of her last day in Sunnydale and never any other day. But for all the monotony, she wishes she could stay in it and never wake up. She would be happy to live forever in that one single day._

_Angel is always there when she awakens. The only thing different is that Willow no longer screams. Today, for the first time, she no longer startles. She is used to him now. She would cry were she alone, but she won't cry in front of him – not anymore. His arms encircle her anyway. Her chest tightens and her lungs abandon the practice of drawing in air. Angel notices, but he doesn't let go. He waits for instinct and, as always, instinct defeats her. She breathes._

She hated the clothes more than anything. She never looked at them when she dressed and she hated to look in the mirror. Nothing in her closet was fluffy or colourful – none of it was hers. She wore tasteful, expensive clothes now - clothes far costlier then even the priciest garments in the closet of Cordelia Chase, she knew - and she hated them. She hated the way the skirts swirled at mid-calf, the way the silk of the blouses shifted softly against her skin, the way the shoes molded to her feet and made them look small and dainty and nothing at all like the feet that once trod through the graveyards of Sunnydale as she gamely played sidekick while Buffy battled demons.

She'd begged once, nearly dropping to her knees, for a fluffy sweater – just one baggy, comfortable garment – but he'd reacted as he always did, acting as if she hadn't asked because she wanted it. He'd told her she no longer had to 'hide her beauty.'

Maybe not, but instead she had to hide herself. She didn't care if the clothes made her look 'better' to objective eyes. To her own, she looked old and dull and nothing like Willow. She asked Angel if he'd take the mirrors out of her room.

They were still there.

And so was she.

_"What's wrong?" Angel's hand is on her knee and she flinches at the contact, though she expected it. She knows her revulsion pains him. Small victories. In a war you cannot win, they are the flowers with which you decorate your dead._

_"I want to go home."_

_"Soon."_

_"You're lying."_

_As always, he ignores anything he doesn't want to hear. "I have a wonderful surprise." Willow stiffens, knowing full well that Angel's surprise will bring her no pleasure. "We're going shopping tomorrow."_

_More silk, more cashmere, more satin and organza and other exquisitely stifling fabrics whose names she doesn't bother with remembering in colours whose names have nothing to do with the rainbow. They are the earth on her coffin. Someday, she hopes, she will claw her way out of this grave. Then she will wear cheap cotton and polyester in shades of bright pink and neon orange and baby blue all at once and none of it will fit properly. That will be a wonderful day. She will be Willow again._

She didn't talk to Drusilla anymore, not for a long time. It had been different in the beginning, but that had been when she still believed she might go home and before the locks had been installed on her bedroom door – before the failure with the pencil and the visitor who added locks on doors she had only just found.

How was her one-time kidnapper faring? All Willow knew of her now were the screams she heard each night as Drusilla and Angel did what she fervently hoped Angel would never ask of _her_.

If things made sense, Willow would have hated Drusilla, reviled her, and gloried in the misery she knew was the woman's lot as surely as it was her own.

_"Shhh…it's alright."_

_"Where have the stars gone?"_

_Willow isn't sure how to answer. She knows that telling her to walk outside at nightfall won't help the sad woman find what she's looking for. Drusilla doesn't mean *those* stars._

_"I'm sure they'll come back," Willow says, hoping it will help. "Maybe they're sleeping, you know? Recharging, like batteries." Batteries? Could she have said anything stupider?_

_"Willow," Drusilla answers – apropos of nothing - sounding as if she's trying out a new word, like a little girl wanting her mommy's admiration for being clever. The look in those fragile brown eyes tells Willow that she's not the only one lost and longing for what she used to have._

She hadn't talked to Drusilla since. Angel's excuse was fear for Willow's safety; but even at first, Willow knew better. Now she knew the whole truth, and it burned. Angel wanted to be the center of her world, and he would take and take and take until there was little enough in it to make that happen.

_"I don't love you. I'll never love you," she says one night when fatigue and despair have made her reckless and hopeful and delusional enough to think he'll respond to words she actually says – that he'll hear something he doesn't tell himself._

_"It doesn't matter." Willow is as stunned by the fact of his answer as she is by its substance._

_"How can it not matter?"_

_"Because I love you."_

_He kisses her then for the very first time. Willow feels the ropes and chains grow tighter around her. Sunnydale is very, very far away. Tonight, she won't dream at all._

End Willow


End file.
